The Cat
by layhee
Summary: No one knows where she is. No one can see her. So is she alive? Is she dead? Or is she somewhere between the two? An Inside-Sam’s-Head vignette, during Grace.


You don't realize it at first, but being in space is awfully lonely. It's bad enough when the ship's buzzing with crew and full of life. But now? Alone? Sam's not sure how she's managed to stay sane.

Though, she reflects, hearing the faint echo of The Itsy Bitsy Spider from down the hall, sane may be a relative term.

Like everything in space. It's all relative. Motion, energy, direction… Unfortunately enough for her, everything is now relative to this cloud. Her motion, relative to the cloud, is zero. Her energy, relative to the cloud, is less than zero. Her direction… well. She's inside it. Direction gets sketchy once you're occupying the same space as your reference.

Normally, that isn't possible.

Sam wishes it were _never _possible.

At the very least, she's not entirely alone. She feels lonely, and really, the hallucinations don't help her confidence in herself, but they do keep her company. The little girl is cute, if a little creepy, and while Daniel's a bit annoying, he's a friendly presence. Then again, when is Daniel not annoying? She sighs slightly to herself. She could do without Teal'c's paranoia, perhaps, but he's got some sort of reason on his side, even if it's just coming from her own head.

Sleeping is not a good idea. Sure is tempting though.

Her mind isn't nearly as fast as it usually is. She feels vaguely drunk, like that wall that seems to appear after the third or fourth beer has taken up permanent residence. That's the wall that makes it hard for her to explain Heisenburg, let alone Einstein, and right now, in the relativity of space, she could really use a little Einstein. He's just not _quite_ within reach.

She beats weakly on the wall. The little girl hums and skips away. She follows her.

Einstein is forgotten. For now, at least.

When she comes to the bridge, she sees the nebula outside. For a moment, she pauses and just watches it. So pretty… the little girl giggles and reaches out as if to touch it. Shaking her head, Sam forces what's left of her mind back to work. Back to reality, where she's stuck with no momentum, less than no energy, and a very strange direction, all relative to the cloud.

Why can't she just stay the little girl, watching the colours? It's so much easier. She could almost sleep…

No, Teal'c says. Sleeping is dying.

Sam doesn't want to die.

Sam is afraid to die.

She sinks down against a wall, knees up to her chest, defeated. At least for now. She'll give it just a little break. No, Teal'c, she won't sleep. She's promised herself she won't, because she isn't going to die. She won't let herself. With or without Einstein in her head, she's going to live.

But just for now, she needs a break.

When the colonel shows up, she isn't surprised. She's not even that glad to see him. He's fake. Made up. A figment of her imagination. How her imagination can dream up Colonel O'Neill as real as the flesh, but not understand Einstein, is beyond her. Then again, a lot seems to be beyond her at the moment.

Like herself. She doesn't understand it. There's no observer. What's left of her mind tells her that without an observer, she doesn't really exist. She's in a state of flux. Dead, and alive. She blinks hard and focuses on the colonel, hoping she's wrong and actually just alive.

On the bright side, though, if she's already dead, no one can expel her from the Air Force if she kisses him.

So she does.

She hopes it'll make her feel alive.

It doesn't.

She just wonders how a figment of her imagination, with no observers except herself, who doesn't count for some reason she can't quite recall, who doesn't _really_ exist, can taste real.

She shakes her head and wishes she didn't. Dead, alive, or both, she's got one hell of a headache.

But then, she's also hung up on Schrodinger. Nothing special, usually, but at the moment she's quite literally of the same mind as this Jack of hers, and getting hung on up Schrodinger is more than enough to account for the headache.

So, she stands. She forgets that she's dead. She forgets that she's alive. She forgets, even, that she has no observers. That she's alone.

It doesn't count if you don't remember it.

At least, that's what she hopes.

And if she hopes, she's got to be alive.

Just so long as the isotope doesn't decay.


End file.
